So Hägerström refers to three different scholars that to a man, first fail to uphold the distinction between values and knowledge, and second, confuse value for truth and knowledge (the distinction between value and truth, and value and knowledge being a distinction whose importance and maintenance Hägerström never fails to stress).To put it in a different way, the fact that knowledge, for example, is perceived to be of value does not imply that the establishment and determination of theoretical knowledge methodologically must be guided by that very value, nor by any other value. In addition to Hägerström’s analysis of values,“Kritiska punkter i värdepsykologien” contains an analysis of value guided sciences, or what one may call politicized sciences.To begin, any value guided science necessarily implies that scientific methodology is substituted for political ideology, as the substitution of the latter type is the only method allowing the “scientific” demonstration of a political idea’s truth value. Because if proper scientific methodology is maintained as the guiding principle of an investigation, then the results of the scientific investigation will tend to lead to politically unwanted results, results that are (or might be) in opposition to the desired political conclusion, and contradict the fundamental principles of a specific ideology. If scientific methodology is substituted for ideology (in a very broad sense, including ethical, religious, and party-political aspects), then it becomes imperative to ask whether the results of the scientific investigation is scientific in any objective meaning of the word. From a scientific vantage point the scientific character of a (tacitly or explicitly) politicized scientific investigation must be determined objectively, regardless of how pressing, heartfelt, noble, or sympathetic a specific cause might be.48 According to Hägerström’s epistemology, the good or evil of a cause will p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 2 256 2 . 2 . 2 . 1 Confusion of Value for Knowledge: Effects 48 Cf. Hägerström, “Moraliska föreställningar,” p. 33; “Moral Propositions,” p. 82.
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